Time of Terror

by Hugh Pentecost

  “It’s pitifully small in relation to his demands,” he said, as he put the suitcase down beside Chambrun’s desk. “A million, three hundred thousand dollars. Everything I own in the world is pledged against it.” His mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “Everything I own now or will ever own. I’ve heard enough sympathy to drown in, and a lot of bloody talk about law and order. But I come up with pitifully less than we need.” He drew a deep breath. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go to the little boy’s room.”

  “Mr. Cleaves!” Brand said.

  “Yes?”

  “Before you go, I have to ask you to submit to a body search.”

  Cleaves looked at the FBI man as though he didn’t believe what he’d heard.

  “This office isn’t bugged,” Brand said, “yet Coriander knows everything that goes on here. We have to believe that someone on the inside is communicating with some sort of walkie-talkie mechanism. If you’ll stand by the wall there, put your hands against it, spread your legs.”

  “You have to be joking,” Cleaves said.

  “Far from it, Mr. Cleaves.”

  “I’m supposed to be in cahoots with Coriander?”

  “You could be,” Brand said.

  “How utterly absurd,” Cleaves said. But he assumed the attitude, and Brand frisked him very thoroughly. He came up with nothing.

  “Thank you, Mr. Cleaves.”

  Cleaves straightened up and he surveyed all of us with angry eyes. “Do you honestly think I could be in on a plan to hurt my own children?”

  “Our faith in you would be strengthened if we knew what it is your wife has on you, Mr. Cleaves,” Chambrun said. “It might help us to understand why Colin Andrews was murdered. We’d understand why your wife was beaten, tied up while you searched Mark’s apartment.”

  “You miserable prick!” Cleaves said, his voice shaken. “My private life is none of your concern, nor does it have anything to do with Coriander and my children.” He turned and walked through into the dressing room and the john.

  “He could easily have gotten rid of any kind of communicating device before he came back here,” Brand said. He shook his head. “Unless Buck Ames comes up with something really substantial, Coriander isn’t going to deal with us.”

  “You can live very comfortably for a long time on something more than a million and a quarter,” Chambrun said.

  “Coriander has bigger dreams,” Brand said.

  Chambrun’s eyes were narrowed. “Maybe,” he said.

  At a quarter past four Buck Ames appeared carrying a suitcase and a black attaché case. He had come up with three million dollars in cash. He laughed when Brand asked him to submit to a body search, submitted to it without argument. He was clean. He, too, could have gotten rid of anything he’d been carrying earlier.

  We sat silent, waiting for word from the fifteenth floor. Time seemed to drag, now. At about a quarter to five Captain Valentine and the Assistant Commissioner checked in. Treadway had arranged for a hundred cops to hold back the street crowds and block every entrance and exit from the hotel.

  “Just on the chance that Chambrun is right,” Brand said, “and Coriander plans to walk out, I don’t want any luggage taken out of the hotel without its being searched. You can’t carry four million dollars in your watch pocket or a woman’s handbag.” He looked at the suitcases and the attaché case stacked by Chambrun’s desk. “We don’t know what Coriander looks like, but we know he can’t be traveling light.”

  Word was conveyed to Jerry Dodd’s office.

  And we waited.

  At twenty minutes past five the red light blinked on Chambrun’s phone. He switched on the squawk box and answered.

  “Is the war cabinet assembled, Mr. Chambrun?” Coriander’s sardonic voice came through the speaker.

  “We’re listening,” Chambrun said.

  “What kind of proposition do you have for me?”

  “I’ll let Mr. Brand talk to you,” Chambrun said.

  Coriander chuckled. “I’m rather disappointed in Mr. Brand,” he said. “I know the FBI type of mind so well. Agreements and promises aren’t worth anything. Did you imagine, Mr. Brand, that I wouldn’t be ready for your sharpshooters and your army? I mean, really. A child could have foreseen that kind of tactics.”

  “I’ll let you have it straight,” Brand said. “We have four million three hundred thousand dollars in cash for you here in this office.”

  “Dear me, that’s rather far short of my demands and, I might add, needs. I’m afraid you are forcing me to the unpleasant business of making it quite clear to you that I’m not joking. It’s too bad that Elizabeth and Mariella have to pay for your lack of cooperation.”

  “Coriander, listen!” Buck Ames cried out. “This is Buck Ames. I swear to you we have tapped every possible source for money. Within the business day, you said. If there was more time, perhaps governments might untrack themselves for more. You know as well as I do that’s not an instant possibility. You want to carve someone up, let me take the place of the girls!”

  “You can take me, too!” Cleaves said in a shaken voice.

  “Aren’t you moved by all that heroism, Coriander?” Chambrun said. I looked at him because his voice had taken on a note of mockery that matched Coriander’s. “Suppose we talk facts. Four and a quarter million dollars plus is a pretty handsome take. You see, I know what you’re going to do.”

  “Oh? What am I going to do?”

  “You’re going to take the money after torturing the children’s parents and grandfather with threats against them. You are going to hold Mark Haskell as hostage when he brings you the money. You plan to walk away, assuring us that if we try to break in, it will set off your bombs. You will tell us that when you are safe you will telephone us with directions on how to deactivate the bombs. That’s what you’re going to do.”

  Again the amused chuckle. “You’re a very interesting antagonist, Chambrun. What about the plane and safe passage to Cuba?”

  “You wouldn’t dream of taking a plane if we had a fleet of them waiting for you,” Chambrun said. “You’d never expose yourself to FBI sharpshooters. You know they’d be waiting, even if you have the children with you. You say you know the FBI mind, so you know that’s how it will be.”

  “And how am I supposed to leave the hotel with the money, with Brand’s men everywhere, with half the New York City police force patrolling outside and inside?” Coriander asked.

  “I wish I knew the answer to that,” Chambrun said. “But I know there is a way, or you wouldn’t have played your hand the way you have.”

  “Can’t you guess?” Coriander asked, laughter still near the surface.

  “I’ve made a dozen guesses, but none of them quite makes sense.”

  The amusement was suddenly gone from Coriander’s voice. “You’ve made a number of mistakes, gentlemen,” he said. “You sent that idiot Horween up here to try to outplay me. You must be satisfied by the result that I mean business. You’ve tried to stage a surprise attack which, as I’ve said, a child could have foreseen. You would be well advised not to make any more errors of commission.”

  “I’m listening,” Chambrun said.

  “The money is ridiculously inadequate, but I believe it’s probably the maximum that Cleaves and Ames could raise. I need to discuss it with my lieutenants. If they agree to accept that pitiful fraction of what we want, I will then have instructions for you. I’ll call back in about fifteen minutes.”

  The phone clicked off.

  “He didn’t say anything about political prisoners or generals to be tried for crimes,” Buck Ames said.

  “I’ve said from the start that all he cared about was money,” Chambrun said. “The rest was window dressing to gain public support. I don’t believe there is an Army For Justice; just a handful of very clever criminals. He’s got to move while all your men are on the alert, Brand, and while the police are patrolling.”

  “I don’t get it,” Brand said.


  “Because that’s part of his way out,” Chambrun said. “Orderly confusion is part of his magic trick.”

  “You let him go, with the girls, until he’s away and safe?” Cleaves asked.

  “I don’t think he will take the girls anywhere,” Chambrun said. “They’ll be more use to him here, waiting to be blown up if we don’t follow his instructions.”

  “If he shows his face, he’s a dead man, hostages or no hostages,” Brand said.

  “Shows what face, Mr. Brand?” Chambrun asked. “That’s the most fascinating part of it all. What face?”

  We waited. Brand made contact with various check points in the hotel. His men were in place. He was satisfied that escape was impossible, but somehow Chambrun had shaken his absolute certainty.

  “I’ve been thinking of one thing,” Brand said. “Suppose you’re right and he plans to ‘walk away,’ leaving the bombs set to go off if we break in before he tells us we can. That detonator is probably connected to a floor plug or a light fixture. There must be a master switch that will turn off all the power in the hotel. We throw the switch and go in. Unless he’s left armed men behind him—”

  “And how would they hope to get away?” Chambrun asked. “I think we can forget the thought that this is a great moral cause with Coriander some sort of messiah. They are crooks, and they all mean to survive. As for the detonator, you can bet your life that it’s battery-operated. The first thing he would expect us to think of, after he’d shown Mark the detonator, would be to turn off the current.”

  “There can be some sort of trip wire that will set off the explosives the minute we open the fire stairs door,” Captain Valentine said.

  “But not until Coriander and his lieutenants, as he calls them, are safe,” Chambrun said. “He wants to live and enjoy the money.”

  We talked round and round the problem, getting nowhere, it seemed to me. And then the red light blinked on Chambrun’s phone again. Coriander was back.

  “We have decided to go with the money you’ve raised,” he said. No amusement this time.

  “I rather imagined you would,” Chambrun said.

  “It’s a pity to have gone to so much trouble for so little return,” Coriander said, “but we’ve made our choice. Now listen very carefully, because I don’t intend to repeat, and you won’t have Haskell to relay instructions.”

  “Go ahead.”

  You can be damned sure I was listening.

  “How is the money packed?”

  “Two suitcases and an attaché case.”

  “Have Haskell bring them up. When he gets here, if he behaves himself and doesn’t try any heroics, he will be trussed up like the proverbial Christmas goose and left in one of the rooms on this floor. The other hostages, the children and Miss Horn, will be handled in the same fashion. My lieutenants and I will leave, and when we are safely away, I will phone you instructions on how to deactivate the explosives. If you try to go in before you get word from me, you will set off the explosives yourself. The responsibility will be yours. Understood?”

  “Quite clear,” Chambrun said.

  “Does the FBI understand?”

  “I understand,” Brand said.

  “Send Haskell now,” Coriander said, and cut the connection.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Brand said. “There isn’t a bat-crack for them to slip through.”

  “We have no choice but to play it his way,” Chambrun said. He turned to me. “I still say I can’t ask you to do this, Mark.”

  “I’ll go,” I said.

  He came over and put his hand on my shoulder. “If I didn’t think you’ll almost certainly be safe, I’d prevent your going,” he said.

  “Almost certainly” weren’t exactly the most encouraging words I’d ever heard.

  “I’m not permitting an elevator to stop at Fifteen,” Brand said. “Coriander may have some crazy idea of getting on the car when you get off and trying that way out. You’ll have to take the bags up to Sixteen and walk down. My men are crowded on the fire stairs, but they’ll know you’re coming.”

  I picked up the bags. Four million dollars turned out to be heavy as hell. Brand agreed to carry one of the bags to the elevator.

  As we reached the door of the office, I heard Cleaves say, “Good luck and God bless.”

  Brand and I went down the hall to the elevator. Just as we got there, I found myself wondering about going in from the fire stairs. It could blow up the joint.

  “Let’s hope not,” Brand said. “I think he wants the money too badly.”

  There was an operator and one of Jerry’s men on the elevator. I said good-bye to Brand. I felt as though I was going to the moon. The elevator whished up far too fast to suit me. Outside the door to the fire stairs on Sixteen two of Brand’s men were waiting for me. They looked as if they were going to the moon, too: thick bulletproof vests, their faces hidden by the bulletproof glass windows in their attack helmets. We didn’t say anything to each other beyond a muttered hello. They helped me with the bags. I didn’t have to do anything but wedge my way through and past a couple of dozen other men from Mars who were crowded on the stairway, armed with rifles and machine pistols.

  We came to a stop outside the fifteenth-floor door that would open into the corridor beyond. The last thing I wanted to do was open that door, because it was the last thing I might ever do. I put my hands on the door handle, closed my eyes, and opened the door. Nothing happened. The armed men handed the suitcases in and closed the door. I was on 15 North, as deserted as it had been on my earlier visits. I dragged the suitcases down to the door of 15 A. I put them down and knocked.

  One of the stocking-masked men opened the door. He took one of the bags from me and I carried the other and the attaché case into the living room. Coriander and the other stocking-masked guy were there, Coriander sitting on the edge of the table, swinging a leg the way he’d done the last time I was there. The false face was the same, the wig the same, the empty sleeve the same.

  “Forgive us if we examine the contents, Haskell,” he said. “I shouldn’t like to get away and discover that the clever Mr. Chambrun had sent us the Sunday Times or a few Manhattan telephone books.”

  One of the stocking masks opened the bags while the other stood a few feet away, a machine pistol aimed casually at my breastbone. Coriander watched the counting process. It would have taken forever to count all the bills, but they seemed satisfied that it was all money.

  “You understand that we’re going to have to immobilize you, Haskell,” Coriander said.

  “Let me see the children first,” I said. “I promised them I’d be back.”

  “An admirable sentiment,” Coriander said, “but I’m afraid there isn’t time. Be good enough to sit down in that armchair.”

  I sat down and one of the stocking masks went to work on me. Each of my ankles was taped to a leg of the chair. My hands were taped to the arms. He faced me with a wide strip in his hands that was obviously going over my mouth.

  “Don’t feel you’re getting special treatment,” Coriander said. “The children and Miss Horn are already in the same situation. If Chambrun and Brand obey instructions, you’ll all be having a midnight supper together.”

  Six hours of being a Christmas goose, I thought. “There just isn’t any way out for you,” I said, “unless, as Chambrun suggested, you can make yourself invisible.”

  He laughed. “An interesting idea,” he said. He gestured to Stocking Mask, who slapped the adhesive over my mouth. “It’s been a pleasure dealing with you, Haskell.”

  He and the two men carried the bags and the attaché case out into the hall and closed the door.

  I was alone, unable to move much more than to wiggle my behind on the chair seat. The silence in that soundproofed room was so loud I think I would have screamed if my mouth hadn’t been taped shut.

  It wasn’t until sometime afterwards that I knew what happened in Chambrun’s office. Chambrun and Brand and Priest and the others waited, an
d presently one of Brand’s men checked with him. I’d made it onto the fifteenth floor.

  After a while Buck Ames exploded. “What the hell do we do, just sit here and wait for that bastard to phone us from Kalamazoo?”

  Chambrun glanced at his watch. “I think we might as well go up and release the hostages,” he said.

  Brand stared at him. “We’re to wait till he phones.”

  “He won’t phone,” Chambrun said. “He really doesn’t expect us to wait very long.”

  “You can’t risk it,” Cleaves said. “The girls—”

  “Coriander is gone,” Chambrun said. His eyes were so bright, Brand told me afterwards, that he had to look away. “Gone forever.”

  “Impossible,” Brand said.

  “Not only possible but accomplished,” Chambrun said. “I think it will be quite safe to go up and in.”

  “And pull the trigger on the bombs!” Cleaves said.

  “There won’t be any explosion,” Chambrun said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I finally know the only way Coriander could ‘walk away,’” Chambrun said.

  If I’d known that Chambrun and Brand were planning to invade the fifteenth floor, I might just have quietly passed out. I hadn’t a doubt in my mind that Coriander had left things set up so that the place would be blown up to hell and gone if anyone tried to attack.

  It wasn’t, I learned later, anything like an attack. Chambrun commandeered an elevator, and over the protests of Cleaves and Buck Ames, and accompanied by Gus Brand, who had apparently decided to put himself in Chambrun’s hands, and Jerry Dodd, who would have walked into the lion’s den if Chambrun had asked it, they went directly to 15.

  Chambrun suggested that Brand let his men in from the stairway. No need to bother looking for a trip wire, Chambrun assured the FBI man. Brand looked anyway, found nothing, and the men from Mars came in off the fire stairs, guns at the ready.

  “Find that detonator!” Brand ordered. “Search every room on this floor.”